There’s one thing wrong with Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky‘s Marty, which won 1955’s Best Picture Oscar and launched the career of Ernest Borgnine after he took the Oscar for Best Actor. (Mann also won for Best Director; ditto Chayefsky for Best Adapted Screnplay.) The problem is that jaunty Marty theme song, which apparently wasn’t written by score composer Roy Webb but songwriter Harry Warren and arranger George Bassman. The brassy and fanfare-ish waltz is entirely out of synch with the simple, somewhat sad story of a lonely Bronx butcher and his loser friends and a girl he falls half in love with. The purpose of the song was to persuade audiences that Marty wouldn’t be too much of a downer. It succeeded in that goal but the music sure feels like a downer now.